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Momentum is rapidly building for Augmented World Expo™ (AWE), the world’s largest expo dedicated to the augmented world. Registration is trending toward 1000+ AR professionals and over 100 leading augmented reality innovators have confirmed participation in AWE 2013. The agenda for our conference is shaping up to make this edgy conference the most important event of 2013.

Register now with ourEarly Bird Rate, which will be expiring in just one week (April 9th) and save $200!
After April 9th the full conference pass price will increase to $595.

If you’re interested to see what Augmented Reality is all about, you won’t want to miss this high-power meeting of the minds featuring 5 AWE-inspiring headliners, 35 hours of AWEsome sessions, shock-and-AWE activities, and an Expo that will leave you AWEstruck.

Keynote speakers confirmed: Bruce Sterling (“The prophet of AR”) and Will Wright (legendary creator of The Sims and reality gaming) will return with mind blowing keynotes. We’ve also added Philip Rosedale (creator of Second Life), Toni Ahonen (former Nokia executive and author of 12 best selling books on mobile tech), and Steve Mann(inventor who’s been designing and using AR eyewear for over 30 years).

Start building your own customized schedule today by saving to your calendar your preferred sessions out of this amazing 110 speaker lineup.

Top 3 Reasons to Attend AWE 2013

Network

1000+ AR professionals — find AWEsome products and partners

Learn

35 hours of AWE-Inspiring sessions by top industry innovators

Experience

100+ demos of “Augmented Humans in an Augmented World”

Augmented World Expo will showcase the best in augmented experiences covering all aspects of life: health, education, emergency response, art, media and entertainment, retail, manufacturing, brand engagement, travel, automotive, urban design, and more. It will be the largest exposition to bring together technologies for Augmented Humans in an Augmented World, including emerging interrelated technologies such as augmented reality, gesture interaction, wearables computing, smart things & robotics, cloud & big data, and 3D printing.

The AWE 2013 program includes:

Pre-Event Tutorial (Mon. pm) – review and comparison of the best AR SDKs

The ARt Gala – AR art displays by top artists and a food and drinks reception

The Startup Launch Pad – Showcase for innovative startups and a competition

The Conference Expo – Leading AR companies display their products in the expo

AWE 2013 will be held at the Santa Clara Convention Center, on June 4-5, 2013.
Don’t miss out on our special Early Bird Rate. Register now

About AugmentedReality.org

AugmentedReality.org is a global not-for-profit organization dedicated to advancing and promoting the true potential of augmented reality. As trusted partner of its members and supporters, AR.org facilitates and catalyzes the global and regional transformation of the AR industry. AR.org also owns and produces the largest international event for augmented reality and the global forum for AR innovation: Augmented World Expo (formerly Augmented Reality Event). All profits from the event are reinvested into AR.org’s industry services.

Augmented World Expo is proud to unveil details about the 2 1/2 day journey deep into the Augmented World: 4 awe-inspiring headliners, 35 hours of AWEsome sessions, shock-an-AWE activities, and an Expo that will leave you AWEstruck.

Pre-event (Monday, June 3rd)

1) Tutorial for AR developers

The 3 hour session will be lead by Patrick O’Shaughnessey who’ll review the best AR SDKs in the market and how to get started, followed by vendor presentations featuring: Vuforia by Qualcomm, Metaio, Total Immersion, Layar, Wikitude, 13th Lab

2) International Hardware Start up Meetup

AWE is hosting the first International Hardware Startup Meetup that will bring hardware startups from across the world. On fire on kickstarter, these startups are not only reinventing manufacturing with digital design, manufacture as service, 3D printing, and robotics, they are also changing the landscape of human computer interaction. Wearables, eyewear, gesture interfaces, and a plethora of “connected things” are bringing clouds and atoms together in new ways to create one the most important new opportunities for the augmented world since smart phones and GPS.

Headlining (Tuesday, June 4th)

Bruce SterlingSterling is an American science fiction author who is best known for his novels and his work on the MirrorShades anthology which helped define the cyberpunk genre. In the last few years, Bruce has been regarded as the prophet of augmented reality, covering and critiquing the emerging field and has headlined previous ARE events.

Toni AhonenThe former Nokia executive and author of 12 best selling books on mobile is best known for his TEDx talk where he describes augmented reality as the 8th mass medium and predicts 1 billion AR users by 2020.

Will WrightWright, the legendary creator of SimCity, The Sims, and Spore – may share for the first time his new endeavor in personal games – new concepts to expand the realm of gaming into our everyday lives. Or maybe he’ll talk about the Russian space program.

Philip RosedaleThe creator of Second Life shares learnings from building a virtual reality world that apply to building an augmented reality world.

Featured Talks in the Main Theater (June 4-5th)

1) The Augmented World Experience

Amber Case (CEO, GeoLoqi, Acquired by ESRI)
Future of Wearable Computing: Constraint, Context and Location.
This talk will focus on trends in wearable computing starting from the 1970’s-2010’s and how mobile interfaces should take advantage of location, proximity and haptics to help improve our lives instead of get in the way.

Ben Cerveny (Grey Area Foundation for the Arts)
Tending your Ambient Computational Metabolism.
As we become continuous users of a whole host of processes running in the cloud on our behalf, accessible across myriad touch points and interfaces, we need to develop relationships with these tools that span individual devices and contexts, and allow us to see how whole systems are affecting us and how we’re affecting those systems. We will tend to a huge metabolism of computation in which we live our everyday lives.

2) Startup Launchpad

The startup launch pad provides a stage for promising AR startups seriously looking for funding to pitch their company, business model and products in front of a panel that consists of VCs and entrepreneurs. The judges will pick a winner for the best AR startup award and a $5000 reward!

4) Future AR Technologies

Matt Miesnieks (CEO, Dekko)

Petter Ivmark (13th Lab)

Jeff Powers (CEO, Occipital)

5) Form Factors for the Augmented World

Mike Kuniavsky (Principal Scientist, Parc)
Sculpting the augmented world: how to create experiences for augmented reality, urban informatics, the Internet of Things, the quantified self, and transmedia storytelling by treating those disciplines as facets of a single thing: networked processing distributed throughout the world.

Thomas Alt (CEO, Metaio)
The AR Engine: Accelerating Augmented Reality. The monumental impact hardware acceleration will have on the future of the Augmented Reality industry, taking AR from single-use apps to always on, always augmented experiences- first in Mobile, and then to the future of wearable headsets and embedded systems

6) AR for more Engaging Brand Engagement

Ambarish Mitra (CEO, Blippar)
5 reasons the world of Brands get excited about Augmented Reality: How AR adds meaning to above the line media and increases ROI

Nathan Kroll, Jonathan Burns (CEO, Ad-Dispatch)
Case studies from the company that teamed up with Walmart and Hollywood studios: Marvel, Disney, and Nickelodeon – to offer in-store AR experiences for Spiderman, Avengers, and more.

7) Connected Play

Lauren Elliott (Robot 11)
Best selling Author of 23 original computer software titles with over 30 million copies of work in circulation – including Where in the World is Carmen SanDeigo software series – will talk about his latest endeavors into connected play with Robot 11.

Josh Shabtai (Vertigore)
Augmented reality games from the creator of the successful StarWars game, and AR for Laser Tag.

8) Cloud, Big Data, and Location technologies

Jon Fisher (CrowdOptic)
How to analyzes where people point their smartphones to identify activity hot spots, engage users with contextual applications, and curate social media content.

Richard Ferraro (Catchoom)
The future of AR will rely on providing valuable content to the user in a dynamic and scalable way, the cloud becomes an essential component.

Clark Dodsworth (Kimera Systems)
How to use AI-driven context awareness as a service to enable brands to serve and sell to end-users in the moment, a totally user-centered model that is intent-based, replacing the mobile advertising model.

AR Means Business!

Showcases of AR in 10 Verticals

1) Retail and commerce

Matt Szymczyk (CEO, Zugara)

Bruno Uzzan (CEO, Total Immersion)

Andrew Couch (CEO, CandyLab)

2) Automotive and Tourism

Victor Ng-Thow-Hing (Principal Scientist, Honda Research)

Jana Rodic (LiveViewStudio – Techcooltour)

Andrea Carignano (CEO, Seac02)

3) Print, Media and entertainment

Maarten Lens-FitzGerald (GM, Layar)

Suresh Narasimha (CEO, Telibrahma),

4) AR for enterprise and industrial applications

Gabriel Weiss (Mitsubishi Electric)

Gerben Harmsen (GM, TWNKLS)

Brian Mullins (CEO, Daqri)

5) Military and Government

Jim Donnelly (VP, Six-15)

Tod Soderstrom (CTO, NASA)

6) Urban and Architecture

Dave Lorenzini (CEO, ARC – CubeCities)

Anthony Cortez (ARUP)

Graziano Terenzi (CEO, Inglobe)

7) AR forEducation

Mindy Brooks (Sesame Workshop)

Christopher Stapleton (President, Simiosys)

Jay Van Buren (CEO, Early-Adopter.com)

8) AR for Training

Alejandro Vazquez (AR Welding Mask – Seabery)

Carl Byers (VP, Ngrain)

Steven Feiner (Professor at Columbia University)

9) Health, Recreation, and Sports

Dan Eisenhardt (CEO, Recon)

Kevin Hughes (ARPool – Queens University)

Patricio Barreiro (Co-founder, Innovar Group)

Hot topics in Design, User Experience, and Culture

1) AR in Art and Museums

Brian Haberlin (Anomaly)Anomaly is an epic science-fiction adventure created by Skip Brittenham and Brian Haberlin, and is available as a 370-page hardcover book and a free augmented reality app which has to be seen to be believed.

Yolande Kolstee (AR Lab)The founder and head of the AR Lab shares her experience in augmenting art and museums Kwith röler-Museum, Boijmans van Beuningen, Van Gogh, Escher in the Palace and many more

Sahar Fikouhi (Darf Design – Creator of Grid)This ground breaking artist will talk about her projects including Grid, an Augmented Reality environment which provides a spatial configuration for real-time gaming at an architectural scale.

2) Content Creation for Non-Programmers

Jean-Francois Chianetta (Founder, AugmenteDev)

Maarten FitzGerald (GM, Layar)

Jacob Ervin (Metaio)

3) Designing Innovative AR Games

Fabrizio Polo (Sphero) – Robot AR Markers: When Balls Become Beavers

Oriel Bergig (VP R&D, Ogmento) – real world interactions for monetization of games on mobile devices.

The Auggies

The industry’s most prestigious award ceremony will highlight the winners of this year’s best products in various categories. The best products nominated will demonstrate their innovations during the evening. Categories and nominated products: to be announced in a few weeks.

City Visions

City Visions is designed to provide an urban AR experience that will offer a glimpse into the digital 21st century city. Developers will reimagine urban spaces by using a wall-sized composite cityscape image that will serve as the marker for any natural feature tracking platform for mobile devices. The cityscape will be large enough to allow users to “walk the city” as they view the unique AR deployments. Developers are encouraged to reimagine urban spaces by creating innovative AR experiences that demonstrate new visions of urban planning, architecture, transportation, and art.

Event Wrap Up and Grand Finale

Following a panel with industry titans that will discuss the challenges and infinite opportunities of future of the augmented world, a live augmented reality performance by Yung Jake:

Breakout star from Sundance Festival, rap artist Yung Jake is “Net art incarnate, flowing lyrics about tweet culture, datamoshing, hashtags, augmented reality, and memes as he blows up on Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, and Instagram in his HTML5 music video, E.m-bed.de/d.” This rapper-artist drops will stream into conference screenings, and pops out of walls in augmented-reality music videos. Experience an In Real Life sighting at the live performance at Augmented World Expo.

This week’s video goes to you Dr. Who fans – I’ll never understand your ways. Sean McCracken apparently does, and thus created this Android app, available on the Android market to display an augmented version of the TARDIS. Everlasting glory to the first fan who will create a video of Daleks shouting “augment! augment!”

Many of the AR community went to the second annual Augmented Reality Event. Sadly, I wasn’t able to be there, but luckily, Augmented Citizen share some thoughts and presentations from the event, Locative Media have some “pirated videos” of the keynotes and Layar uploaded videos of a couple of their presentations to Youtube. If you have a video or a blog post about the event – send me an email or give me a tweet.

Sander Veenhof is a genius (there, I said it!) and Layar should be paying him money for choosing their platform if they don’t already do so. This time he came up with a way to use augmented reality to create a world wide synchronized dancing routine. It’s an augmented macarena!

This week’s video is of a simple augmented reality game, called Tapcloud with an interesting premise. By chasing virtual cloud (and looking a little bit foolish), the game forces you to get some exercise, and even counts the number of calories you burned once it’s game over. The game is available for free on the app store, so you have nothing to lose (except, again, calories).

But it’s not about the quantity – the quality of these speakers is what makes it a must see event: check out the wide variety of talks in the ARE2011 schedule-at-a-glance and you’ll start drooling. Come to the event and see for yourself how AR is already changing practically every aspect of our lives.

Register today with the exclusive discount code for games alfresco readers: ORI295

This week’s video comes to us from Nokia Research, showing their indoor navigation solution. Coming from Nokia Research, one of the first bodies to look into mobile AR, this should be considered as no more than a teaser. It’s very cool and alluring with its 30cm accuracy, and its “where I put my keys” functionality, but not likely to be adopted anytime soon. Five years from now, Apple/Google will probably come with inferior solution which will be hugely successful. You can read more about the technology on GSM Arena.

Sander Veenhof created the first one-dimensional art piece using Layar, aptly named 1px (math geeks, calm down! a pixel is indeed not 1 dimensional, but as close as one can get). You can also see an interview with Veenhof about art in AR.

If you have any programming in the last year, you surely know of StackOverflow.com. Now there’s an attempt to create a similar Q&A site for augmented reality. If you think this idea has any merit then show your support.

April fools: AdBlock Freedom – augmented reality eyewear that detects and removes ads from the world in realtime. Probably the guys at AdBlock never heard of Artvertiser.

I love videos done by students to show off their work. This week we are lucky to have Predator, a very impressive video (though I haven’t tried it myself) tracking algorithm resulting from Zdenek Kalal’s phd thesis at the University of Surrey, UK. You can try it yourself by downloading a compiled application to your pc, and read more about it here. Though desktop bound right now, Kalal claims that “implementation for mobile devices is feasible”.